Election Day in Bolivia 2005: A View from the Chapare and Cochabamba

Dec.17th, Saturday, mid-day: Evo and the MAS camp were feeling good. We stopped a road side restaurant in between Cochabamba and the Chapare to eat fresh fish with Evo, his communications team, and about 98 Bolivian and foreign press. Evo was gregarious and chummy with the media and OAS (Organization of American States) election observers along for the ride. Then came the rainbows—two of them, miles apart arching far down into the Chapare basin—on the last leg of our descent into the tropical region. I couldn’t help but think of them as harbingers.

Saturday, 8pm: We walked around Eterezma passing out MAS buttons, wallet-sized Evo calendars and plastic bags with Evo’s face on them. The cocaleras in this countryside Chapare town were feeling confident: “We are going to get 50% plus one,” Apolonia repeated to me several times in the last 24 hours. We had sample ballots with us too to explain to several older women—one last time—how to vote.

Dec. 18th, Sunday, 8:30 am: The courtyard smelled like coca. Just after the polls opened in Bolivia, the central area of the Eterezama school house was filled with over 500 people. The lines snaked this way and that, as awaiting voters tried to avoid standing directly in the hot sun. At the ten registration tables along the walls, voting officials signed in each voter and then held two ballot sheets (one for President and Congress, the other for Prefect/Governor) up in the air, for public verification of their authenticity. Papers in hand, each Chaparenos then entered an unoccupied school room and cast their vote.

A few miles away, in Villa 14 de Septiembre, Evo voted at 8am sharp, the first one in the district. Flanked by cameras and microphones, Evo placed his ballot in the cardboard box, and then zoomed off for a mid-day press conference in La Paz.

Sunday, 11am: It all felt eerily calm, partially because of the ban on transport (unless you arranged for authorization) and on alcohol (prohibition Friday night through Monday). But the tranquility also came from people’s attitudes. In the Chapare, there were no big rallies, no large parades, no last minute push for voter turnout, just people arriving at schoolhouses to fill in paper ballots. And on election day, that’s all you need.

Sunday, 5:30pm: Driving back from the Chapare on almost vacant roads, the blue and white painted sides of countryside shacks, and weather-worn MAS flags tied to tree branches were unavoidable reminders of what a young woman, ironically named Eva, had said to me earlier that morning.

“Evo is like us,” she explained. “He knows what it’s like to live in poverty. He knows what it’s like work the land, to harvest crops. He understands our lives. That’s why I am going to vote for him.”

Sunday 7pm: Back in Cochabamba, we started getting news from the day. There is talk of major fraud, that over 1 million people across the country arrived at the polls and were told that their registration was not confirmed, that they couldn’t vote. But even with this, the MAS numbers were already climbing to 45%, while Tuto hovered around 33%.

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